Book Reviews

There’s always this sense of anticipation when I read a book by editors and authors I personally know. My belly churns; there's an involuntarily pause before I exhale and my heart adds a beat to its rhythmic song because a resonance exists that translates from colleague to text. I hear their voice while reading as if we are together, in person, having an amicable chat. When I heard that Halko Weiss, Courtenay Young and Michael Soth were part of The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology, when I heard that many colleagues had contributed chapters, I immediately had to read it and share my thoughts with SPT Magazine’s readers.

“If you’re confused and frustrated despite all you know and achieved, or how much you’ve worked on yourself, this book offers 18 unconventional approaches that reveal how you got stuck, how to finally break through, and awaken to your True Self.”

This morning I felt a connective epiphany, a strong resonance, while reading Raja Selvam’s new book, The Practice of Embodying Emotions, chapter 9 specifically, I felt like someone in the driver’s seat actually knew where he was going, directed by an intuitive GPS taking him and me to an emotional place that made sense: sensorimotor emotions. I offer my review of his book in hopes it might shed light on clients you are working with or perhaps something within yourself as well.

There is a hackneyed tale of two young fishes. As they are swimming in the sea, they encounter an old fish who asks them, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two fishes pass him by without saying a word and then one of them looks over to the other one and goes, “What is water?” In his new book, How to Think Like an Anthropologist?, Matthew Engelke takes on the daunting task of asking us about the water: our culture.

Our Spring issue is pleased to have a personal and powerful article from Katja Rusanen, author, spiritual life coach, and inspirational speaker. She shares her early experience with a lover's suicide and its impact on her life, then ties her personal journey into her professional approach to health and healing.

As part of the “Theories of Psychotherapy Series” from the American Psychological Association (APA), this book focuses the components and benefits of brief therapy. Intended for clinicians, Levenson’s book is informative and instructive as it is paired with a companion video that demonstrates the treatment. The brevity and organization make this book helpfully simple and user-friendly. Levenson utilizes tables, bulleted lists, and other visuals alongside her well-researched writing to clearly present this treatment as a viable tool for therapists.

The book is imbued with the serious belief that the human mind and soul is not an accidental side product of genes, brain, and body, but a dimension in the human where he/she strives to fulfill his/her talents and aptitudes, including the possible healing of traumatic experiences in earlier stages. Spirit as well as body as necessary but not sufficient condition for being and becoming human

Trauma is pervasive in our lives, from smaller situations that trigger feelings of inability and fear to larger catastrophes that render our entire being useless as we careen out of control. Be it a result of human inflicted acts of violence—war, terrorism, genocide— or the result of natural occurrences such as hurricanes, tsunamis, and wild fires that leave us feeling victimized, isolated, abandoned, people walk through their lives numb to their reality. Their senses are overwhelmed; scenes flash in as if happening now, not then. People exist in the past as if it is the present. And when these people become our clients, when in fact these people are in part, ourselves, we, as therapists, need to offer hope and possibility to move from then to now, to live a better quality of life than what we are experiencing in the current moment. But, how?

Intimacy from the Inside Out (IFIO) by Toni Herbine-Blank, Donna M. Kerpelman, and Martha Sweezy is geared toward psychotherapists who are seeking an alternative method for practicing couples therapy. IFIO therapy stems from Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), a model developed by Richard Schwartz in the 1980s as an approach to working with individuals and families, then later expanded to include couples. IFIO couple’s therapy involves a two-step process of planning for the predictable universal issues that couples face and responding skillfully to other unexpected factors. Couples entering IFIO therapy often hold the two goals of feeling safe within their relationship and reestablishing intimacy. In the initial session, the therapist meets with the couple to inquire about hopes and goals, assess their ability to accept differences in each other, and then offer a perspective on the possibilities of treatment.

The million-dollar question is: how do we become more productive while reducing stress and anxiety? David Allen provides an answer to this question with a simple and yet efficient principle: write things down as you think of them. In a nutshell, Allen’s system of productivity focuses on getting things out of your head, organizing them, and getting them done.